4) 2010/Oct-Dec
Free Art 2010
Alex Gawronski: Free Art, 2010
Peloton, Sydney
(PVC pipe, timber, aluminium, acrylic and enamel paint, amplified sound of dripping tap)
The spaces of art are normally imagined to be spaces of freedom, a series of interconnected sites where ‘free expression’ reigns. Often the freedom of the art space is consciously or unconsciously believed to arise from its being set apart from the tedious constrictions of the ‘real world’, an oasis in a desert of banality and mundane daily obligations. While this is true to an extent, it is also a serious illusion: art is always in some way intertwined with everything outside it, if not as a simple reflection, then at least as an abstract kernel of the numerous social, political, historical and economic forces that shape it.
Interestingly, this last factor, economics, has elsewhere been described as ‘the primary fetish of our age’. It is a fetish though, which rather than perverse, is ultimately only inversely excessive according to the extent of its bureaucratic/managerial normalcy. As a fetish, economics also has a distinct effect on how a large percentage of contemporary art is perceived, especially after the long-absence of an avant-garde or more generally, of a transcendent/utopian dream of art. Therefore, while art today can maintain a certain distance from the negative imperatives of mere industrial production, it is also everywhere partially bound by the overblown prerogatives of dollar fixation. Contemporary art as a result is either caught in, or readily embraces, paradoxical attempts to redeem itself from the otherwise stultifying sameness incurred by exaggerated emphasis on economic value as well as economics’ pervasive representations and affects.
Again, as far as the spaces of art are concerned, the gallery is still regularly regarded as something of a refuge from the outside world, including the world of base economics (unless of course economic discourse has been specially pumped-up and glamorised for art’s sake). Indeed, the Post-War burgeoning of contemporary art museums all around North America and Europe, quickly caused many contemporary theorists to comment on the quasi-religious (though tourist-friendly) sanctity of their many self-representations. Alternatively, if one were to take the utopian premises of the various historical avant-gardes at face value, aren’t galleries also like prisons? Isn’t the gallery or museum, instead of a haven, a place where the artwork is not so much set free as imprisoned, nailed to the wall of mass representation and fetishistic veneration? Thus, do not the historical avant-garde’s efforts to free art from its meagre identity as ‘culture for consumption’ and from its exacerbated attachment to capital, also imply the imprisoning circumstances of the traditional presentation of art? ‘Free Art’ takes such considerations as a starting point for a humorous and not un-paradoxical re-thinking of the identity of exhibition space.
Belonging 2010
Alex Gawronski: Belonging, 2010
Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown (I.C.A.N.), Sydney
(Timber, MDF, brackets, microphones + stands, paint)
Visiting a gallery is assumed to be a simple affair: we go, we look, we pass judgements. This last point is crucial to our apprehension of any artwork. Traditionally, at its basest, judging art becomes merely a question of taste, “I ‘like’ it”/ “I don’t ‘like’ it”. Far from a self-evident issue of taste or personal choice though, the real question when judging art pertains more fully to the very judicial dimension of the gallery.
Of course, the space most obviously associated with judgment is the courtroom with its definitively drawn figures of institutional authority. In courts, the Law makes its presence most emphatically felt. However, The Law ultimately represents a labyrinthine space where, although we might expect them to be, decisions are rarely made according to the straightforward differentiation of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ (even in situations where they ought to be). Justice, alas, is not always served. Even though we are frequently encouraged to imagine justice as purely objective, and righteous, it rarely plays out as though it were. Instead, rather than readily apparent, judgements in a strictly legal sense, are founded upon the manifold complexities of legalise.
‘injustice is clear, justice is obscure’ 1.
With this in mind, it is revealing to consider that the gallery is habitually supposed to be a space outside the bureaucratically banal or otherwise intimidating reach of the Law, as such. Art is conceived alternatively as a space of freedom and ‘free expression’. Upon closer analysis though the art world is connected inevitably to the wider space of the Law. From a particular perspective, it might even be seen as a microcosm of the legal domain. Indeed, there are unspoken laws of behaviour and production within the art world that, even while allowing for freedom, also proscribe and condition the very types of art made. For example, in a contemporary situation where it is possible, in fact where it is a common occurrence, to present the most extreme and ‘offensive’ subjects as art, it is equally the case that ‘shock’ and provocation can equally constitute a type of orthodoxy. In such situations, these expressions merely confirm the traditionalist ‘law of art’ where art is the naturalised domain of ‘unlimited’ expression, or expression for expression’s sake. Thus, art is only ‘naturally’ free because effectively contained by its freedom as represented. Meanwhile, the testing of the legal boundaries of contemporary art effectively reinscribes the immanence of the Law as law.
Of course, the hierarchical dimension of the contemporary art world and its various branches also mirrors the legal status of the world ‘outside’. Here however, questions of belonging, while undoubtedly inescapable, are rarely directly broached. Really, the art world, like the ‘real’ world, is a stratified territory comprised of separate entities to which one may belong or not (and where there are also fissures where questions of belonging remain suspended, ambiguous and anxiety inducing). In the outside world, the problem of belonging is even more blatantly apparent, the most obvious instances regarding ongoing and interminably biased discussions of the legal identity of those portrayed as ‘illegal’ others. Such serious legal considerations in actuality disguise the truly exclusory impulse that animates them and which are based on a legalised sense of innate superiority. In a similar, though less dire way, exclusory impulses partially dictate the machinations of art. The most literal cases illustrating this relate to decisions made as to who shows where and/or how often as well as related consensus-determined issues like access to funding.
As far as the subject of belonging goes, the notion of the artist as an outsider has long been discredited and quite rightly so. Nonetheless, it remains a fact that in contemporary art – a field of production regularly viewed as inessential and peripheral – degrees of ‘outsiderness’ prevail. Furthermore, rather than the utopian field of free-play – or more commonly today, the naturalised site of ‘art-as-entertainment’ – contemporary art is equally an area subject to the most precarious, ill-informed and arbitrary judgements. As far as this particular installation is concerned, art’s belonging to the law is rudimentarily spelled out in Kafkaesque fashion via objects whose identity teeters between the prop-like and bathetic and the sober monochromatic formalism of minimalist sculpture.
(1). Alain Badiou, Metapolitics
Amendment 2010
Alex Gawronski: Amendment, 2010
Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown (I.C.A.N.), Sydney
(Timber, enamel paint)
Kazimir Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ (1915) continues to provide a compelling reference for many contemporary artists. Its ongoing fascination may be the result of its propositioning of itself as art’s Ground Zero finally clearing the modernist slate of all representational pretensions. Similarly, the ‘Black Square’s’ underlying claims to universality – in tune with the utopian premises of the revolutionary society from which emerged – equally opens it to repeated reexaminations.
Of course, the insistently iconic dimension of Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ has also been numerously analysed as has its related transcendentalist drive. However, the utopianism of Malevich’s core-work and its implicit demand for an imminent and therefore fully ‘real’ised art has long since fallen on hard times. Indeed, the ‘Black Square’s’ attempt to elide historicity ends only in emphasising history. Nonetheless, this fundamental paradox actually contributes to its persistent attraction precisely because the work’s ultimate ‘meaning’ cannot be conveniently revealed (like the greater Utopian Promise despite endless claims to the contrary).
In ‘Amendment’ constrictive temporality and the utopia of its attempted denial or supercession are superimposed. The ‘post-linguistic’ ‘Black Square’ has been amended to suggest its inevitable binding to historical process through its affective transformation into a clock: the a- or post- historical artwork is literally a ‘piece of time’. It is a piece of time nevertheless that succeeds, although perhaps not as Malevich intended, to endlessly regenerate.
